Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Amon Tobin - Bricolage

Ninja Tune: 2007

So much music slips through my ever growing queue of “Must Hear Before I Go Six Feet Under” (I doubt Amazon will deliver to my bomb shelter following the apocalypse). Even with artists and labels I hold in the highest regard, there are unacceptable oversights and gaps on my part. Why has it taken me this long to finally spring for an Amon Tobin album? I like Ninja Tune. Like, really really like them – in a roundabout way, they were among the first 'underground electronic music labels' I dove into. Yet even with a number of their releases taking up space in my towers, one of their primary stars is noticeably absent. It’s like gathering Ultimae records while neglecting Carbon Based Lifeforms, or Hyperdub vinyl while bypassing Burial – you just don't do it, mang!

Right, it’s not like I’ve totally missed out on Tobin’s work, having heard a few of his Cujo works released when he was part of Shadow Records. And while Ninja Tune was quick to pluck him from that label, his sound left an undeniable impression on several up-and-comers featured in future Shadow releases, many finding inspiration in his fusion of jazz-jungle-hop. I’ve heard his work without even hearing his tracks!

Bricolage was his first album for the Ninja squad, and immediately found kindred souls among the likes of Herbaliser and Funki Porcini. All these guys, they loved the jazz vibes just as much as ol’ Adonai Santos de Araújo, and were always eager in finding ways of melding them with contemporary inner-city cool genres like trip-hop and jazzstep. Ol’ Amon though, he knew his production game needed something extra to stand out from the big guns. Bizarrely, he found it with IDM breakcore.

He doesn’t immediately reveal his intents either, the first few tracks finding the comfortable jazzy trip-hop vibe so many associate with Ninja Tune of the mid-to-late ‘90s (who do you think helped define it!). Yet there’s something more intricate going on with the drum programming - less reliant on using sampled breaks as the music’s backbone, and rather as genetic soup for reinterpretation. It’s Amon making future jazz out of classic jazz, and I can’t help but think of Squarepusher’s early work in this context. Not as frenetically experimental as Jenkinson’s material, mind you, but it’s there just the same.

Then Chomp Samba hits with all the feral nastiness of drill-n-bass’ intensity, and you realize you’re not in for the usual Ninja Tune romp. Tracks like One Small Step, Mission, and Bitter And Twisted keep the spazzy breaks going, all the while oozing a creeping menace with discordant cellos, trumpets, vibraphones, and saxaphones (among others). Dubby, trip-jazz-hop cuts like Defocus and The Nasty help keep Bricolage grounded with soul (not to mention some playful samba-stylee in One Day In My Garden), but we’re mostly dealing with aggressive music here, the sort one might expect on Warp rather than Coldcut’s print; a perfect LP for Ninja Tune’s musical growth, then. Welcome home, Amon.